My friend Evelyn is staying on a man-made reed island on Lake Titicaca in Peru & just sent me an email from her iPad…huh? Is no place immune?

I’m currently redesigning the site. Unfortunately employment is beckoning so I probably won’t get back to working on it until next week.

(update Mar 07, 2012) Well it’s been almost a full year & I finally had some time to work on my own site. It’s almost finished but I start on Quepolandia tomorrow…then I’m shooting video for Evelyn…then I have to switch out the video on the Vacation Buggy site. Who knows when I’ll get back to this…?!

One of the joys of living in Costa Rica is the amazing assortment of plants that can be grown here, including 1,500 native orchids. Recently, one of my orchids was about to bloom and every morning while I had my coffee I’d examine the buds. They were developing well and getting nicely plump and pink. One morning I was sure they’d be open and I went out with camera ready, only to find nothing but little pink stubs. What the…??!! I checked around to see what insect could have eaten them but found nothing. Fortunately, only the ripest buds had been eaten and there were some left still developing.

Saddleback Caterpillar (Acharia stimulea)

Over the next few days whenever the buds were ready to burst open, they’d end up as stumps. I was pretty sure this was the work of the little green and brown grasshoppers that are all over my garden, so I was vigorously poking into the vegetation when I felt intense pain and burning on my left forefinger. YEOW!! Damn! I’d felt this before and new exactly what it was. I flipped over the closest leaf and sure enough there it was, a Saddleback caterpillar (Acharia stimulea). Each of those little hairs is a venomous stinger and they tend to break off in your skin.  I took some Benadryl and then soaked my finger, and the pain disappeared after a few hours, but I was left with a bunch of blisters in the exact shape of the caterpillar.

Read More…